Vocal Voices

I'm getting totally fed up with people moaning about how much things cost these days.
£1.50 for a cup of tea, £2.50 for a coffee, £2.00 for a slice of cake, £10 a day for parking.
Honestly, if this keeps up I'm going to stop asking my mates round to our house.

I often wonder what things would be like if we didn't have inflation.

I suppose inflation happens because workers keep expecting to have (and get) repeated pay increases, which then
automatically results in prices of everything going up. (And they then expect a pay rise annually). When I was a lad
you could get fish and chips for 3 pence, then when I left school I got employment in a carpet design office for ten
shillings a week, which was quite good then. As this inflation process is a world-wide practice, I suppose there is no
chance that it will ever end, so I guess we will just have to put up with it.

Cromwell, a man with a five wheel combination lock on his wallet.

That is a dirty lie that, a dirty lie!
It's only four...
Aggers, threepence for fish and chips!

cromwell wrote:Aggers, threepence for fish and chips!

Yes, that's right. This was back in the 1930s, when my father's weekly wage was only 27 shillings a week, old money.
and I could buy a small cone-shaped bag of sweets at the local shop for just half a penny.
At the Fish and Chip Shop you could add a free bag of batter bits if you liked. Cinema tickets were only 3 pence.

Happy days !!!

We were Catholic so it was always fish & chips on Fridays. This was in the 60s.

Mum would send me to the chippy with five shillings for thrice and two cakes (three fish and chips and two fish cakes) then on the way home I had to stop at Harrison's the bakers for an uncut loaf.

Mum had already done the mushy peas so this fed six of us.

I got to keep the change as a tip for doing the chore.

Holidays in the late '50s in a holiday chalet in Kinmel Bay camp, North Wales …. taking the open top bus down to Rhyl's massive funfair …. spending all my allowance on those old 1d bagatelle arcade machines while Mother played bingo - if I got lucky, I won a 2d packet of polo mints (the fruit flavoured ones ) which were pretty much stale .… then walking back down the main road to the chalet, stopping halfway to buy 6d cones of chips from the chippie which we happily devoured on the way home ….. happy days!

(Rhyl, like most other seaside resorts that had their heyday in the 50s and 60s (Blackpool, Bournemouth, so on) is nothing but a right dump now, but that's progress, I suppose )

AliasAggers wrote:At the Fish and Chip Shop you could add a free bag of batter bits if you liked.

We used to call those scraps. You were always offered some. The first fish and chip shop I can remember is Butlers in the village. They had a massive 22lb (I think) Golden Carp in a glass case on the wall.